LINGUIST List 25.4112
Fri Oct 17 2014
Diss: Kuki-Chin, Zou; Anthropological Linguistics: Tungdim: 'A Descriptive Grammar of the Zo Language'
Editor for this issue: Danuta Allen <danutalinguistlist.org>
Date: 17-Oct-2014
From: Philip Tungdim <philipzo_64
rediffmail.com>
Subject: A Descriptive Grammar of the Zo Language
E-mail this message to a friend Institution: Jawaharlal Nehru University
Program: Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2012
Author: Philip Thangliènmâng Tungdim
Dissertation Title: A Descriptive Grammar of the Zo Language
Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
Subject Language(s):
Zou (zom) Language Family(ies): Kuki-Chin
Dissertation Director:
Pramod Pandey
Dissertation Abstract:
The study of the grammar provides a bird's eye-view of the historical background and ethnology. It portrays the history, origin and ethnicity, physical features, theories of origin, the geography of Zo people as recorded in traditional songs and poems, Póigâl ‘Poi War’, attacks of Meitei/Manipuri chiefs, Zogal ‘Zo uprising’, settlement patterns, economic system, social organization, traditional games and sports, music, dances and folksongs, political system, arms and ammunitions, religion, folktales and legends, the significance of the hornbill emblem, and popular flowers of the land.
The comparative perspectives of Kuki-Chin languages with respect to the Zo language present the general descriptions, historical development and growth of the language, genetic and typological classifications, geographical areas, and survey of the language along with some of its cognate languages, a brief historical linguistics of some Kuki-Chin languages, a brief comparative glimpse of the language and some cognate languages, an outline of the evolution of dialects and languages, as well as a historical survey of Kuki-Chin languages.
The phonology chapter describes the phonemic inventories of vowels and consonants, phonemic contrasts, phonotactics, and suprasegmental tonology of the Zo tone system, tone alternations, tone notations, types of Zo tones, description of Zo tones, Praat diagrams of different types of Zo tones.
The morphology and morphono-tonemics chapter covers noun morphology, which deals with topics like classification of nouns and its sub-classifications, animate nouns, numbers, human nouns, nominalized nouns, numerals, pronouns, personal pronouns, clusivity, pro-dropping and pronominal agreement pairs, pronoun case forms, anaphora, adjectives, adverbs, structural classification of adverbs, semantic classification of adverbs, syntactic order of adverbs, postpositions and their classifications, conjunctions and their classifications, interjections, particles or makers, and clitics.
Verb morphology explains the structure and classifications of Zo verb, syntactic classification of Zo verbs, directionals, tense system, aspects, mood or modality. The mood or modality section portrays the pragmatic functions of moods in appearances of verbal stems in irrealis and realis moods. The verbal stem alternations explain the appearances of Stem2 verbs.
Word formations and morphono-tonemics section explains various processes of word formation in neologisms. Derivational morphology section explains compounding, which is a highly productive process of word formation in Zo. The affixal morphology section explains the derivational (affixal) morphology of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., and the inflectional processes of word formation of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
The syntax chapter covers topics such as noun phrase, sentence and its structure, or phrase structure. The discourse structure chapter describes topics like cohesive devices, politeness, speaking, writing, proverbs or advices, discourse markers, information structure, theme, focus, and evidentiality. Lastly, the lexicon covers the domain-wise nouns, adjectives, and verbs.
Page Updated: 17-Oct-2014